REGIONALIZATION OF THE METEOROLOGICAL FEATURES OF SOUTHEAST REGION OF NIGERIA
Accurate description of the climatic features of any studied area usually constitutes most scientific articles. This study aims at characterizing some of the meteorological variables in southeast region of Nigeria using descriptive statistics and trend analysis techniques. Climatic data lasting 86 years of five meteorological stations located in Owerri, Imo state, Enugu, Enugu state, Umuahia, Abia state, Abakaliki, Ebonyi state and Awka in Anambra state were used for the study. The results revealed that towns in the northern part of the region received more heat than their southern counterparts while the southern part received more moisture. Rainfall is the most variable weather element. It is observed that only cloud cover is positively skewed while only sunshine hours, solar radiation and rainfall have positive coefficient of kurtosis in the entire regional data. The results at 5% significance level, the Mann-Kendall test reveals that while there is no trend in solar radiation except for Umuahia, monotonic trend in evaporation was detected all over southeast, Nigeria, with significantly increasing trend in Enugu at a rate of 4.371 cal/cm2/minute/year. The outcome of this study sufficiently describes the climatic features of the region and thus can be used to confidently describe the region as a study area in scientific reports.
Authors : Ibeje, A. O.
Category : Open Access Volume (Issue) : 7(1) Date Uploaded : 15th July 2021